


dreams don't scare you (they ain't big enough)

by jumpfall



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Coda, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 13:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11464929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpfall/pseuds/jumpfall
Summary: There are roughly eight people Tony needs to call urgently, including representatives from the UN, NYPD, DODC and Pepper. The sensitive tech needs to be inventoried on scene and placed on another flight tonight, with the recently reactivated Colonel Rhodes sitting co-pilot. All of this needs to be coordinated with Happy and the team already mobilized.What he says is this:  "Is he alive?"





	dreams don't scare you (they ain't big enough)

Happy's phone goes to voicemail three times before he finally answers Tony's call with, "Scene's secure, Boss."

For now, Tony thinks. The explosion was visible from as far away as Manhattan. An experienced reporter's first call will be to the PR point contact for the UN oversight team; there will be a camera crew on the scene getting a live shot of the devastation within the hour. Any agency with a standing in the jurisdiction fight will send someone to the battle royale for control.

There are roughly eight people Tony needs to call urgently, including representatives from the UN, NYPD, DODC and Pepper. The sensitive tech needs to be inventoried on scene and placed on another flight tonight, with the recently reactivated Colonel Rhodes sitting co-pilot. All of this needs to be coordinated with Happy and the team already mobilized.

What he says is this: "Is he alive?"

Happy, to his credit, does not pretend to misunderstand. “They both are.”

“I’m five minutes out. Keep eyes on him until I land. Sic somebody from EMS or Stark Medical on him, whoever you can find with the gray hair of someone who’s raised a teenager.”

“He’s gone already. Left a note.”

“ _What?_ ”

The HUD pings, and the picture Happy has just sent flashes on the screen. “P.S. Sorry about your plane,” Tony reads aloud, incredulous. “That little shit,” he adds fondly.

“It was stuck to a crate beside the guy he left gift-wrapped for us.”

“Where is he now, do we know?” They haven’t had an active tracker on him since Tony took the suit back. Minimal contact had led to a novel’s worth of bite sized text messages, active contact had let to the destruction of the Staten Island Ferry: no contact had seemed like the last resort for saving Peter from himself.

“His phone’s still functional, but I’m looking at it,” Happy says. “Kid called Ned won’t stop calling about him, though. He says he’s Peter’s guy in the chair, whatever that means.”

Tony lands in the sand with a thump, taking in the breadth of the scene before him at a glance. A glint in the sand by his foot catches his attention; he brushes it off with one hand to reveal a brand new, unused arc reactor. There are several more scattered in the ground around it, partially buried. This is what the fight had been over, this tech. His tech. Tony knows better than anyone how it can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

“Put him through,” Tony says.

-

“Have you written a universal lock picking code, or is it specific to manufacturer? Or did you exploit a backdoor which was already there? Are there lockpicks built into the suit for physical locks – or, wait, do you normally knock the door down instead?”

The keypad to Peter’s apartment building flashes green, and the door buzzes accordingly to signify they have been granted entry. Tony slips his phone back into his pocket. “Yes, yes, and no. Which one’s his?”

Ned leads him up the stairs to the twelfth floor, and Tony repeats the trick with the apartment door. “Second door on the right,” Ned tells him. They bypass the kitchen, filled with touches of home – assorted spice bottles on the stove, a half-eaten package of cookies on the counter, pictures of family on the fridge – and head straight for the room indicated ‘Peter’s room: science in progress, knock first’, to which the door is firmly shut. A sharp knock on the door goes unanswered.

Tony prepares himself to deal with a ball of furious, idealistic anger. He readies himself to be a source of stability for the adrenaline crash, as the hormones fade and the delayed fear sets in. He braces himself for the sight of a fatally wounded kid unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

They open the door to find Peter asleep in bed, snoring faintly. The red hoodie of his homemade costume hangs from the bedpost, the mangled mask discarded on the floor beside it. He’s still wearing the undershirt and sweatpants he had fought in, judging by the dried bloodstains.

“FRIDAY,” Tony whispers.

“Scanning now, sir,” the AI promptly responds. Tony’s bracelet glows blue, a thin ray of light appearing from each indentation along its circumference. They spread out to cover a person-sized distance, their direction focused by the angle of his index finger. He scans the length of Peter’s body, a detailed list of his injuries appearing on the holographic display on his phone.

A moderate concussion, fractured clavicle, bruised spleen, and litany of cuts. All of which will heal with a few days light rest and Peter’s accelerated healing factor. Tony thinks about his knee, which is still bothering him after a bad fall last month. Teenagers, man. Made of jelly.

“Is he okay?” Ned asks, and Tony turns to face him. Rather than aging him, the open tie at his neck makes the kid look impossibly young. Tony is abruptly reminded that though Ned’s kept it together reasonably well since Tony filled in the basics on Peter’s wild night in exchange for an ordered list of locations Peter would be likely to go, at some point the danger of the situation has started to sink in.

“Well, he’s in fewer pieces than I was expecting,” Tony says. “Where is his aunt tonight?”

“Girl’s night. She won’t be home until morning. Should I call her?”

“No, don’t. This isn’t how she should find out. I’ll keep an eye on him tonight, make sure he’s not bleeding into his brain.” Ned’s eyes widen, and Tony holds a hand up. “It’s fine. He’s fine. Comes with the territory.”

“Captain America has super strength, Thor’s a god, and Hulk’s – well, Hulk. How do you survive your injuries without healing powers like them? You’ve crashed into several buildings and survived – that seems improbable. And what about the inertial dampeners in the suit? Those G-forces are more than even experienced pilots can handle.”

“A car is waiting downstairs to take you home. Thanks for your help, I’ve got it from here.”

Ned looks disappointed to have his questions side-stepped, but the tone of authority does its job and he gets ready to go without further objection. Tony is in the middle of shuffling him out the door when Ned pauses, hand on the doorframe, worried eyes focused on Peter’s extremely still figure. “He’s going to do this with or without you,” he says. “But he’d be a lot safer with your help.”

To his credit, Ned’s voice doesn’t waver. It’s a strong statement from a kid in the presence of someone who intimidates him. Tony adds the weight of Ned's judgement to his own regarding the series of missteps that have led to their current situation. “I see that now.”

“I hope you do. He’s my best friend.” Ned stares him down for a long minute before he takes his leave. Tony rubs a hand over his chin absentmindedly as he closes the door behind him, making a note of the security upgrades Aunt May’s apartment will need going forward to keep them safe from the sort of enemies Peter is likely to make.

With or without him. Tony recognizes that drive. What he doesn’t understand is its origin. Peter doesn’t have anything to atone for, no sins to wipe clean. He’s who Tony set out to protect all those years ago, both pre-conscience as a weapons manufacturer and post as someone self-aware enough to know the consequences of his actions will lead the editorial sections of newspapers worldwide.

Peter's too young to sign up for this, but it's pretty clear by now that isn’t going to stop him. There are a hundred reasons why none of them should be doing this, many of them a great deal more convincing than age. He has a stubborn streak a mile wide, a pig-headed focus on a single goal to the exclusion of all else. That sounds familiar, too.

‘This kid’s going to be the death of me,’ he messages Pepper.

She sends back a YouTube clip compilation of Tony’s top 5 most memorable press conferences followed by the note, ‘He comes by it honestly.’ She’s not wrong, but if superhero teenage rebellion is karmic payback for his past, they’re pretty screwed. ‘They’ being at minimum, NYC; at maximum, the continent.

Peter was smart enough to bypass the training wheels protocol and disable the tracker, and that’s something to nurture. Robotics club, band practice, decathlon – more than a semblance of normalcy, he will need these to keep him grounded in the future. Right now the public is on his side, but there will come a day sooner rather than later when that changes. Too much property damage will be done, someone will get hurt, and the media will spread the blame around liberally.

There’s so much more he needs to know if he’s going to do this. Tony is far from the best person to show him the ropes, save for one thing. He’s here. Half of parenting is consistency of care. It’s showing up. If they are very, very lucky, that will be enough while he figures out the rest.

Peter makes a pained noise in his sleep, curling up tighter on his side. Tony’s clenched fist causes the medical scanner in the bracelet to reactivate, and he scans the kid again to confirm that nothing has changed. “He is in stable condition,” FRIDAY reports without prompting. “This is not the result of his injuries.”

“Let’s keep an eye on that that,” he says, pressing a button on the side of his phone. A sentry drone deployed from the suitcase Iron Man suit in the foyer whizzes past his ear and settles on Peter’s wrist, dutifully displaying a live readout of his vitals.

“Copy Happy,” he instructs the drone. A cheerful ping confirms his order has been carried out, and he nods to himself, self-satisfied. His attention drifts to the open math textbook on the desk, and he wanders over to flip it open to page marked by the lined paper, where Peter’s scribbled handwriting denotes progress on the current calculus assignment. Tony circle his answer for 3d and writes WRONG in bold text. BASE E, NOT BASE 10.

“We’re going to have to work on this,” Tony informs him, settling into the desk chair with the posture of one who expects to be there awhile. “This question is garbage.”

Peter snores on.

Tony pulls out his phone to scroll through the waiting messages. Rhodes is in the air with a dozen boxes of the plane’s contents, all 256 of the miniaturized arc reactors among them. Happy’s team has put the rest on three armoured trucks with an NYPD escort upstate. Steve has left a message on the Cap phone to offer his help, should it be necessary. This too is something Peter needs to learn: it takes a village to do what they do. It took Tony a long time to build a support network and even longer to deserve it. In that, at least, he can give the kid a head start.

He wanted to be an Avenger? It's not a title you're given, it's a title you earn.

On that basis alone: he always was.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic of "dreams don't scare you (they ain't big enough)"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343848) by [Profilore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Profilore/pseuds/Profilore)




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